Saturday, 20 September 2014

Players will be able to create and manage official player groups. It is fairly standard to have these sorts of groups in a MMORPG (they are usually called guilds), however our implementation goes a step further due to the nature of VoidSpace. Player organizations are given their own website that they can customize. It is hosted by our server system, but the most important property of this webpage is the fact that new users can signup to the game through their page and automatically become a member of the player organization while simultaneously becoming a new VoidSpace user. Before a player joins a particular player organization however, they have a chance to review the material the org has put on their webpage which describes the type of organization they are and what sorts of services they have to offer in the game.

It is important to understand that player organizations are expected to function like separate societies. For most organizations, the main goal will be to attract new members because of the "strength in numbers" concept that is prevalent throughout the game's design. Organization members are able to spawn a new character within the established in-game domain of the player organization, and this is why it is so valuable for player organizations to attract new players into their group.

Some of the player organization functionality is already implemented into VoidSpace, and we can already see the positive effects this is having. Player organizations share their pages in order to attract new members and inevitably promote VoidSpace long with it. As the number of player organizations continue to grow, so will the number of players we will see join VoidSpace through these organization's efforts to promote themselves.

Once the game is more established and player organizations stabilize and grow, we expect to see player organizations becoming "big business" because of the ties VoidSpace has with real-world economies via Dogecoin. Player organizations stand to gain from having additional members. This will likely lead to player organizations becoming major corporate entities with the push for cleaner, more professional systems of government as competition for new members increase. We can therefore assume that player organizations will take their marketing campaigns into the real world to fervently attract new players for us.

Due to the heavy emphasis on player created content, the game experience for new members would be very customizable and depend very much on the organization's established infrastructure. For some players, this will make it important to join an organization with a trusted name and a professional system. For example, the player organization might have schools set up to teach new characters a basic set of skills, and possibly even to educate the player as well. There might even be an established system of government to help organize members and a sort of social safety net within the game that mimics the types of civil services we see in real life.

We've created the "Crowdsourced Marketing Program" which allows you to submit links that is then shared among everyone who is part of the program. This can be a link to a forum post, reddit post, facebook post, twitter post... anything that has your referral link and is promoting VoidSpace. The members of the marketing program are then able to help by adding to the discussion, adding interesting/insightful comments, and answering questions. Sometimes this is particularly beneficial because additional replies to a forum post can bump it's visibility.

Remember that any signups you get will get you 300 Dogecoins, and any signups your signups get will get you 100 Dogecoins.

If this is the first you've heard of the Dogecoin Referral Program that awards you dogecoins, check out this blog post:

What will be expected of me?

Generally, the purpose of being in the program is to help everyone with their online posts. You will probably need to signup to many online forums and sites so that you can participate in the discussion. When you do signup, it would be good if you could add a comment or two that puts VoidSpace in a good light, offer insight into the aspects of the game that you like, offer information on what is coming, and answer questions that people just hearing about the game might have. Keep in mind that you will be creating accounts on forums that you might not have thought about, and you'll be able to advertise your own referral links there once the original post is complete!

This blog has answers to many of the common questions and concerns people have, so please get familiar with the posts that are available here and feel free to link to them when answering questions! I've also found that this video blog will answer some other questions like "How does the Universe Project relate to VoidSpace"

If you find there are too many emails from the program, all you need to do is contact me and let me know you would like to leave the program. Eventually you will be able to exit the program yourself.

More information can be found once you join the Crowdsourced Marketing Program.

This program is by Invite Only; you will need special permission to get into the program. If you would like to be a part of it, please contact me at narmstrong@universeprojects.com with the subject line "Marketing Program Application".

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

VoidSpace and the Universe Project has an extensive open-source component. Open-source developers will have access to a separate repository of code which contains a number of our fundamental frameworks on which VoidSpace is being built. There are a number of different tasks that can be done by an ODP member, and not all of which are programming related. For example, we currently need someone to investigate TideSDK to see how it works and how to use it. If it appears to meet our needs, we will then use it to create native desktop deployments for VoidSpace.

Everyone who has significant contributions through the ODP will be granted access to the game for free, it is the least we can do for your effort!

Programming work

For the programming side, we use Java for both the client and server. Even though the client doesn't use Java directly, we employ GWT which allows us to compile our Java into Javascript so that it runs on a browser. You don't necessarily need GWT experience to be useful as an open-source developer, so please don't let that hold you back! We also have a limited need for Html/CSS/Javascript developers who can help us with development of the main website.

Marketing work (non-technical)

We are also working on putting together a marketing team to help us with getting the word out. Some examples of marking work include:

Using Searches to find new gaming or cryptocurrency related sites

Keep track of research done through Google Docs so that anyone else can pick up where you left off

Contacting journalists and websites to see if they have any interest in VoidSpace

Creating posts on Reddit, Gaming forums, Cryptocurrency forums, Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts for VoidSpace. Each post would then be credited to your account so we can keep track of how much work you've done for us.

Feel free to have a look at our task tracking system which we use for both core and ODP developers. This can give you an idea as to what the individual tasks tend to be like if you are interested in getting involved.

There is always something to do, big or small, so if you have any interest in helping us build this project, just contact Nik at narmstrong@universeprojects.com.

Friday, 29 August 2014

We accept Dogecoin!

For quite a few months I've been accepting Dogecoin donations manually, which was a pain because I also needed to adjust the donor's donation reward level manually. Well, we finally now accept Dogecoin donationsdirectly on the site. All donations made go towards the user's donation reward level on the site. The donations do NOT get automatically converted to USD, and so far we have been able to hold the Dogecoin that has come in. For the most part, the Doge actually gets redistributed throughout the community in the form of signup incentives and we definitely use it to fund the Dogecoin Referral Program.

I still need to process BTC donations manually, but we will eventually be able to automatically accept it along with a number of other altcoins as well.

If you would like to fund the VoidSpace project and acquire some donation reward levels, click here.

If you haven't signed up yet don't worry, it is very painless, we only need your email address!

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Welcome to the Dogecoin Referral Program!

Now you can earn a tonne of Doge while doing great things for both the Dogecoin economy and VoidSpace! From now on, every person you refer to VoidSpace will earn you 300 Dogecoins. In addition to that, every individual your referrals signup will earn you 100 Dogecoins.

For those not familiar with VoidSpace, it is a breakthrough MMORPG video game that is aiming to be the very first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game to use cryptocurrency as it's in-game currency. There are many other jaw-dropping reasons to like VoidSpace, but that goes beyond the scope of this post.

If you would like to get started earning Dogecoin, follow this link and enter your email address in the red box. You will then receive a verification email, and in that email you will also be given your very own referral link. You can pass this link to your friends or post it in various places on the internet. Just please be careful not to annoy people with posts, we want them to like us! If you would like some useful hints and tricks on getting lots of referrals, check out this blog post.

Please note that you will only be awarded the Dogecoin when your referral validates their email address. Please also note that the general rule of thumb is only 1 referral is allowed per household.

If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Please be aware that using alternate email addresses, fake emails, throw-away/temporary emails are not allowed and will cause you to be banned from the program. In general, we only allow 1 signup per household.

What can I do with the Dogecoin I earn?

Well, Dogecoin is a real currency. There are exchanges out there that will allow you to convert it to USD, but there are also a lot of online stores that accept doge directly, which will save you some money and time with the conversion. However, now you can buy Donation Reward Levels with Dogecoin directly on VoidSpace's website. This essentially means that by promoting VoidSpace, you can get the game for free!

UPDATE
It has only been 12 hours since we began the Dogecoin Referral Program and already 3 people have earned 10,000 Dogecoins! We are now looking at possibly creating a top 10 leader board.

Friday, 15 August 2014

Why should I refer people?

There are 3 benefits VoidSpace users get for referring their friends to the game:

Depending on how many people you refer, you will get discounts ranging from 10% to 50% off of the final game or reward levels (this even includes the custom ships/building levels that are valued in the thousands). The exact numbers can be seen here:

3 Referrals - 10% additional discount on top of any price (promotional or otherwise) on the final game upon release

9 Referrals - 15% additional discount on top of any price (promotional or otherwise) on the final game upon release

25 Referrals - all regular donation reward levels are 25% cheaper

100 Referrals - all regular donation reward levels are 50% cheaper

Any time one of your referrals donate, you will receive 25% of their donation in the form of donation credit. This donation credit is automatically applied to your donation reward level. You can even get the game for free this way! For example, if your referral donates $20, you will receive $5 in donation credit towards your reward level. Check out your donation reward level any time by logging in and then going to the PLEDGES section on our website.

Finally, we often run the Dogecoin Referral Program. While the program is running, any time you get a referral, you will receive 300 Dogecoins. If your referral refers someone, you will get 100 Dogecoins. You will be free to withdraw the Dogecoins from your account for use anywhere on the web, or you can use it to buy donation reward levels, or even use them in VoidSpace to buy goods and services from other players (once that is implemented). However there is a waiting period of 7 days so we can check the validity of your referrals (yeaa, we get a lot of scammers believe it or not).

Okay, I like nice things, so how do I get lots of referrals?

We provided you with your own referral link in the initial email you got when you signed up. If you didn't receive the email or lost it, it is easy to find out what your referral link is by clicking here and logging into the website.
Here are some ideas, hints, and tricks you can use to getting referrals from online sources.

Refer your friends and family

This is probably the most obvious one. Just keep in mind that only one referral per household will be counted. This is probably the easiest way to get a referral or two, but definitely not a good source of the large number of referrals you're clearly looking for.

Post about the game in various forum sites around the internet

There have been a few posts from forums that have actually gotten a lot of attention. Specifically, there is a Minecraft community forum that allows posts about other games that we've been receiving traffic from for a year!
Here are a few things to note before posting your referral link on a forum:

Make sure you post it in the right place! A lot of game forums have a section for "other games" that you're allows to post to. You don't want to get banned or to come off as spammy.

Try to post on forums that relate to the game or the game's technology in some way.

Add lots of informative and helpful comments on forums that allow you to put a banner ad in the footer of each comment you make

This is an amazing way to get traffic without having to make sure you are not spamming in the wrong places. We have created some options for banner images that you can use to help entice people to click on your referral link. This method might require that you fiddle around with forums to get the footer working just right, but with just a teeny bit of technical know-how, you should be able plaster your referral link all over forums that support this feature.

Obviously it is best to find as targeted forums as possible (gaming at least) while also finding forums that allow for footer banners with links that have a decent following.

Here are some options for banner ads, feel free to download and use them, or even link directly to the url they're hosted on here:

Make VoidSpace posts on smaller subreddits that allow it

Reddit is a great way to get traffic, but there are a lot of rules that must be followed, so be very careful or you might get yourself (and your referral link) banned. Be sure to read the "side bar" rules of each and every subreddit you wish to post to before you make your post.

Here are a list of subreddits that relate to VoidSpace in some way. Again, please read the sidebar for rules before posting. Some of the subreddits listed here may not actually allow referral links!

Post your referral link in response to relevant comments

This applies to anywhere that has a comment section. You could use Google to search for websites that are having conversations on relevant topics (like the topics listed in the "Post about the game in various forum sites around the internet" section above).
Some examples of websites that use comments and may have people talking about a relevant topic:

If someone comments that they liked Escape Velocity Nova, you could reply that VoidSpace is doing something similar.

If someone posts how unrealistic games are these days, point out the Universe Project philosophy and include a referral link

If someone says that flash and/or Html5 games (we are Html5 based) are no good, point out VoidSpace and how it is actually a real-time MMORPG with Twitch-Gameplay and happens to run entirely in the browser using Html5.

Write a blog entry and spread it around the net

http://Blogger.com and http://WordPress.com make blogging very easy to setup and its completely free. If you want to create your own informative blog post about VoidSpace, check out our presskit for images and information that you are completely free to use to make your case. You might find it is easier to get traffic to a blog than it is directly to a referral link because in some places (like certain subreddits.. yea I'm lookin at you, /r/gaming) might ban or disallow referral links altogether. This is a great way to get around this limitation while providing some concentrated information for those you wish to refer to help sell your case.

You may not feel like you have a way with words, but often times blog entries don't need to be very long to gain a lot of media attention from places like Reddit. You are also free to copy and paste any text we put out on our websites or other social sites for use in your blog entries. So have fun with it!

And by the way, if you do your own blog entry, you can make money on the ads... just sayin.

Check this post from time to time for expanded information and suggestions. If you feel like we have missed on any cool marketing ideas, let us know in the comments!

Thursday, 10 July 2014

I try to hold Dogecoin and when I get BTC, I usually convert to Doge. By using Dogecoin as a currency, and using services that use Dogecoin as a currency, we effectively create a closed loop that can only result in Dogecoin reaching the moon! Therefore, I would like to lead the initiative for a concept I call the Net-Positive Dogecoin Business (NPDB).

A net-positive Dogecoin business does the following:

Supporting services for the business should be paid with Dogecoin whenever possible, even if this means choosing a slightly less desirable service that accepts Dogecoin. An example of a supporting service would be computer stores that accept Dogecoin when buying hardware, internet service providers that accept Dogecoin, domain registrars that accept Dogecoin..etc.

Preference would be given to a supporting service that claims to not convert immediately to fiat and rather tries to use Dogecoin

The business should accept Dogecoin and try to convert to Dogecoin when possible

Overall the business should, through regular operation, increase the market cap of Dogecoin by running a business that puts a priority on circulating Doge and/or converting FIAT to Doge

Ideally, the Dogecoin foundation would come up with a review process before approving a business as a NPDB and these businesses would show up on various official Dogecoin websites and forums in a favorable spot. Until a review process can be decided upon, we should probably accept businesses that claim to be net-positive at their word, even if it's just to get the ball rolling.

Ideally, we would want to come up with a badge that a website can post on their site (which would link back to the official Dogecoin website) that shows off their dedication to being a NPDB. Hopefully our community of talented artists can come up with something! ;)

Thursday, 19 June 2014

How will VoidSpace implement Dogecoin?

We will be creating an experimental MMO server that allows you to spawn a new character at the cost of
some Dogecoins. The dogecoins you pay in will be randomly distributed throughout the game world as a mineable resource. Which means that you can actually make money by playing the game. Not only will you be able to mine Dogecoins in-game, but you will be able to trade them with other players, or even attack players and loot their coins.

We will also be allowing for custom servers to be created where all players who join the server have to pay a buy-in in Dogecoins, and the player who survives gets to keep the coins at the end of the game.

Finally, the standard MMO server configuration will allow players to simply deposit coins into their characters so they can buy things from other players in-game. With this configuration, players won't need to mine the coins first. There will be some limitations on this configuration however. Players won't be able to remove coins from their character whenever they want. There will be a period once the coins are acquired that they will need to stay in the character's inventory. This is to keep players from stealing coins, and then removing them from the game so they cannot be taken back. Coins will also only be able to be removed in batches. For example, if the batch size is 1000 coins, and a player has 1200 coins in his inventory, he will only be able to "cash out" 1000 coins. The purpose of this is to keep at least a small amount of coins on the character available to be stolen/looted by other players. (Keep in mind that 1000 doge is currently worth about 40 cents)

Ok fine. But why Dogecoin?

Dogecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency that enables you to easily send money online. Think of it as "the internet currency." Dogecoin is based on the same code that the wildly successful Bitcoin was created from, with some added tweaks to make transactions much faster. We have decided to go with Dogecoin for our virtual in-game currency for a number of reasons:

Dogecoin was founded on the idea that a digital currency should be fun and friendly, and we believe this ideal fits in very well for an in-game currency.

Unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin's value is much less than a dollar, which makes it better suited for a game currency. It just feels better to get paid 1000 Dogecoins rather than 0.001 Bitcoins.

Dogecoin transactions are much faster than Bitcoin (~8x faster) and Litecoin (~2.5x faster). This means that putting money into your account or sending money from your account will be much faster.

Dogecoin has support from many currency exchanges so you can easily convert Doge into the currency of your own country. However, we would encourage you to check out Dogecoin services online that will accept Dogecoin directly!

Even though Dogecoin will be directly used as the in-game currency for VoidSpace, we will still accept other crypto-currencies and standard currencies. The crypto-currencies we will be supporting are as follows:

Dogecoin

Bitcoin

Litecoin

Vertcoin

Quarkcoin

Auroracoin

Darkcoin

Maxcoin

Mintcoin

I'm concerned that VoidSpace is just a Pay 2 Win game

Our funding model is partially based on the fees we receive for micro-transactions between players. The alternative would likely have to be a monthly subscription for the game, which players would probably hate. A few people see the player to player Real Money Transaction (RMT) as a Pay-to-Win (P2W) system and I have a handful of reasons why this isn't the problem they think it is.

Generally, P2W is associated with games where players can buy things from the game developer to give their characters more power in the game world. This is primarily what gets people mad about P2W as it clearly makes it impossible to play the game "fairly". VoidSpace doesn't actually do this and all transactions happen between actual players.

If you're still concerned about P2W happening in a player-to-player RMT system, then I would say that this is the case for ALL MMOs. People will sell on Ebay, directly on Paypal.. it will happen no matter what the TOS states. Making it easier for players to perform RMT only makes it safer.

Regular games suffer more from a P2W scenario in general. In most games, players are all in close quarters either logically or physically (virtual-physical). For example, Diablo 3 had the global auction house, this has the effect of having every player in the world in the same room and whoever has the most money, gets the best stuff. VoidSpace relies on "localities" that will occur naturally. Players cannot even communicate over long distances let alone trade on a global scale. You must find what you want before you can have it.

What it comes down it is this: players don't like it when they feel like they have to pay in order to be matched with the other players in the game. But this is the reality of a game that is based on reality. There are many more ways that a player can get more power than you and having more money than the other guy is only one of many. Any given player could be playing beside people who:

A) already have an existing fan base on the internetB) have been playing for a long time and have amassed a lot of powerC) have lucked out and created a technology that makes them much more powerful than you

VoidSpace is a truly organic world and this kind of distribution of power will occur in many ways for many different reasons, not just because someone has the most money.

If a player wants to get away from all that, in VoidSpace, he can. The world is going to be enormous and at any point a player can pick up and find a remote place to live, far from what he deems as a hostile and un-fun environment.